Westlake Soul

by Rio Youers

  But I wasn’t so fuckn done with him.

  I don’t know much about Wayne. I figure there’s a reason for his attitude. Maybe he was beaten as a child, or made to feel unloved. Or maybe, like Yvette, he senses something better inside, but is afraid to let it out through fear of rejection. With more time, or inclination, I would have delved into his past. Nobody is born mean, after all. They become mean, through circumstance and environment. Who knows . . . maybe I would have cut him some slack if I’d discovered that his mother was a crack whore, or that, as a kid, he’d had his asshole popped by a lecherous uncle. Every supervillain has a backstory. Orphaned, betrayed, haunted, or disfigured. There’s always something that draws them to the Dark Side. But whatever happened to Wayne will remain a mystery, and I’m cool with that. I carried his hate and anger inside me, after all. I know how real it is.

  Also, I was hell-bent on revenge. I didn’t want anything to diminish that.

  And nothing did.

  I’ve mentioned the biofield several times—more commonly known as the aura: a wave of energy that surrounds all living organisms. Sounds like something my grandma would experience during a peyote jaunt. Throw in one of her rainbows. Couple of unicorns. Spin a Grateful Dead track and away you go. But it’s not like that at all. There’s science at work, and it runs deep. Not all scientists would agree with that statement, I know, but to hell with them. I’m smarter, anyway.

  It was called the Vital Force in seventeenth-century Europe. You may also know it by its Chinese name, Chi, or its Indian name, Prana. Whatever you call it, the principle is the same: in the simplest, most accurate terms, the biofield is a vibratory signature unique to the cell or molecule it represents. Think of it as a cosmic fingerprint. Every living organism has one, and no two are the same.

  It resonates, this fingerprint. And it is possible, through understanding (and certainly with a mind like mine), to recognize and replicate this resonance. It’s like two musical notes tuned to the same key, becoming one concordant sound. Once this link is established, energetic signatures can be transferred—through aspects of quantum entanglement and Sheldrake’s morphic fields—from one system to another.

  In other words, I could resonate with Wayne’s biofield, and interact with it. So all the hate and anger I’d collected from him could be transferred back in one brutal hit.

  Which is exactly what I did.

  That wall of hate came crashing down. I crushed him beneath it.

  He left the club just after midnight. Walked rain-washed streets to his truck. I trailed just behind—a weary ghost, laden with the anger I had gathered. The streetlights swam in puddles on the sidewalk. Pools of neon from the Chinese restaurants on Spadina. He bumped into an old man carrying a bundle of newspapers. Didn’t apologize. Kicked a garbage can. Hovered for a moment outside a restaurant where Han folk music warbled from a speaker above the door, then stepped inside to grab something from the takeout menu.

  Clouds stirred overhead, throwing a little rain, a little thunder.

  “Spring roll.”

  “Number six, yeah?”

  “I dunno. Spring fucking roll.”

  I floated outside, my shoulders aching under the weight of Wayne’s anger. That wasn’t all, of course. Knowing I was down to my final few days, facing my broken family, still searching for a way out . . . I felt so weak. At least I had this, my heroic revenge on Wayne the Fucktard. One last trophy for my Wall of Achievement. My only regret was that he wouldn’t see me. I wanted him to look into my eyes as I returned every fat block of animosity.

  Wayne got his spring roll and ate it on the move. It was gone in three man-sized bites, oils dribbling down his chin. He balled the trash, dropped it on the sidewalk, and crossed the street. There was an alleyway leading to the Green P where he’d parked. He started down it, weaving a little. I moved ahead of him. Got ready.

  I had no idea what to expect. To interact with his biofield so violently . . . would he shudder, as if someone had walked over his grave? Would he fall to the ground, clutching his heart, eyes bulging? He veered toward me, muttering under his breath. The alleyway was illuminated by a streetlight at either end, and featureless, save for a couple of dumpsters and a fire escape snaking to the roof of the building on the right. I waited until he was halfway along, where the shadows were deepest, and then made my move.

  I threw my arms wide and let him pass through me, analyzing the vibratory pattern of his biofield, a thing that writhed and kicked. I applied an identical signature to all the hate and anger I had drawn from him over the weeks, and transferred it with a fierce mental push. As much as I could unload in one hit.

  Every sneer and unkind word. The birds he’d flipped. His bullish ways and arrogance. Breaking Yvette’s trophies. Running a screwdriver along the side of her pretty yellow car. His thick hand around her throat. The bruises on her arms. Punching her in the eye.

  Motherfucker.

  Punching her in the eye.

  I gave it all back to him . . . the way he made everybody—not just Yvette—feel. A massive gulp of his own medicine.

  He broke—folded—as if someone had thumped him in the stomach. A wail escaped him and he turned his face to the sky. Fingers hooked. Shaking his head. I took a step back. I knew he’d feel something, but this . . .

  This was good.

  My turn to sneer.

  This is how you make other people feel, Wayne, I said. Not so cool, huh?

  He sobbed, covered his face with his hands, fell to his knees.

  You’re a bully. With a heart like nothing. I towered over him, my emotion on fire. All of my frustration and sadness. My fear and determination. A mountain of everything I had been through. Anger, too, that life was wasted on someone like Wayne, who could love but chose not to, who could make a difference but didn’t care. If there’s good in you, I can’t see it. But I know now just how insecure you are . . . and how sad.

  “No,” he moaned. The rain pattered off his shaved head. “Jesus God, no.”

  I should have left him to his misery, but the anger burned inside me. Wasn’t fair that he could move and live when I—who had so much more to offer—was down to my last breaths. A cloud of resentment stained my energy, my judgement. I threw yet more hate at him, grabbing the bricks I had collected and slamming them into his biofield. I could almost hear the thud as the signature aligned.

  He shuddered and crawled away from me, trying to protect himself. It was like running from his own shadow. He collapsed against a dumpster, curled into a ball, and I continued to unload.

  “No . . . please, Jesus . . . please . . .”

  So much anger and aggression, cloaking deeper issues that were surfacing now: his fear of rejection and powerlessness; isolation and sadness. Dude was having an emotional breakdown. A bad one, years in the making. I didn’t let up. One brick after another, until my work was done.

  I’ve got no pity for you, I said. You’ve got problems, brother. You need to get your shit together.

  He punched the side of the dumpster and dragged himself to his feet. His eyes were wide and scared. I started to float away from him. I had more work to do in the motor cortex, and damn I was weary—didn’t want to use any more energy on Wayne. A rumbling sound stopped me. Thunder, I thought, looking at the stone-coloured sky. But no; I turned around and saw Wayne rolling the dumpster down the alleyway. Its steel body scraped the wall and boomed.

  The hell are you doing, Wayne?

  It quickly became evident, and I realized I had underestimated his anger, the emotions it masked, and the impact of throwing it all back at him.

  Wayne rolled the dumpster to where the fire escape was bolted to the wall and used it to hoist himself onto the lower platform. I watched as he thudded up the stairs, taking them three at a time, moving from one platform to the next with alarming purposefulness. He clearly wanted to act before he could change his mind, and within moments was climbing the short ladder to the roof. He wiped his eyes and veered across the ro
oftop, muttering denials and apologies that were lost to the wind.

  I followed, the city lights shining through me, feeling my physical body rattle and bleed. I needed to return, but this was something I couldn’t look away from, any more than I could look away from a helicopter spinning out of control, or a train hurtling toward a collapsed bridge. I was fascinated. Was he going to leap to his death, or was this a cry for help? Either way, I had brought him here. I had done this.

  Wayne reached the edge of the rooftop. Stepped onto the ledge. Sixty-five feet above Spadina Avenue.

  Do it, I thought, a line straight out of Dr. Quietus’s script. I hated that I’d had such a dark thought, but it was easy to remember the bruise beneath Yvette’s eye. The way she had sobbed into countless scrunched Kleenex while Alicia Keys sang—delightfully appropriate now—“Fallin’.” Sad but true: a world without Wayne wouldn’t be missing much. Do the whole It’s a Wonderful Life routine, and folk’d be happier.

  The rain picked up, falling in grey lines that veiled the city. The skyline was a switchboard of blinking lights in the east, with the top of the CN Tower lost in a swag of cloud. Thunder ripped. A callous gust that made everything swirl, including Wayne. He teetered on the edge. Almost fell.

  Could I stop him from jumping? Did I want to?

  He leaned forward. I thought he was going and my instinct was to grab the back of his jacket, pull him back, even though I knew my hand would pass right through. But he held himself, an inch—no more—from plummeting to the sidewalk. The rain bounced off his broad shoulders. Ran down his face with the tears.

  Do it. That thought again, like Dr. Quietus working through me. I pushed it away and floated closer to Wayne. Below us, the glow of traffic on Spadina Avenue. Neon fading as restaurants closed for the night. A couple, hand in hand, hurrying to get out of the rain. Nobody noticed Wayne, as veiled as the skyline. First anybody would know would be his broken body bleeding into the gutter.

  This wasn’t a cry for help. I’d crushed him beneath a wall of his own misery. Dude was going to jump.

  He muttered something. I don’t know what. It was drowned by the rain, by the tears in his throat. His right leg twitched, about to step into emptiness. I knew that all I had to do to send him over was throw another brick at him. Not even a brick. A stone. A pebble. It would send ripples through his biofield and he would be gone.

  But who was I to drop the hammer? My life had been ripped from me. I knew its power and beauty. I knew that, for all the universe, only death was bigger. I let go of the anger inside me. Some of it Wayne’s. Most of it mine. Ghosted out above the drop, faced him, and then flowed through him. I found a fragment of hope and threw it back at him. It was enough. He stepped back off the ledge and slumped to his knees, wrapped himself into a shape that seemed too small. A world away from machismo. The alpha role was dead. I left him, crying on the rooftop, contemplating a life without anger. I drifted back to the groovy room, where I shook uncontrollably and stared, pale-eyed, at the ceiling.

  Where Dr. Quietus spread his wings.

  Laughed like he had a shoal of insane people hiding beneath his dark robes.

  And took me.

  23. Supervillain.

  I was dragged into a world that reminded me of a movie set. The location for the thrilling finale. An abandoned factory with banks of dusty machinery—drills, saws, and presses—waiting to whir into life. Vats of corrosive substances. Steel catwalks. Chains hanging from the ceiling. The air smelled of oil and burned metal. I looked around, expecting to hear the cinematic score—tension ramped up by the high notes on a piano. Maybe a long, ominous tone lured from a cello. Something fluttered in the partial lighting and I jumped. A butterfly with burning orange wings that had found a way in but couldn’t find a way out. It flickered out of sight, lost in the darkness at the far end of the factory.

  So this was it. Our final battle.

  I couldn’t see him, but knew he was there. Crouched high up on the catwalk, or behind one of the machines. Or perhaps he was a machine. He’d open his eyes and lights would flash. The motor would start, the conveyor would roll, and I’d be sucked in and chewed up, spat out at the other end in grisly red pieces. I felt like one of the kids in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Jesus, I was even wearing my pyjamas. Not exactly becoming of a superhero. No cape. No dandy boots. I’d never felt so powerless. I tried to fly; if I could reach the catwalk, I’d have a better view of the factory floor, perhaps anticipate his attack. I hovered three feet above the ground—could go no higher—and came down with a thud.

  This wasn’t looking good.

  A sound from up ahead: scratching, followed by a crunch, like a ball-peen hammer striking bone. I peered through the gloom and saw him, low to the ground, shoulders rounded. He’d dropped from the ceiling, where he’d clung like a spider. I took a step back as he rose to his feet. His wings rippled, black as my fear.

  “So this is the end,” I said, my voice fragile. I edged away from him, but he took a huge, booming step forward and covered more than half the distance between us. The catwalks shook and the chains rattled. I saw fire inside his cowl.

  Westlake Soul, he said. He so loved to say my name.

  I wondered if I could fight—if I had anything left after being starved for eleven days, and after using so much energy on Wayne. I had always foiled Dr. Quietus, but things were different now.

  He spoke my name again and—THOOMP!—stomped his foot. Machinery woke. Cranked dials and blinking lights. Everything shuddered, including me. I turned and ran, weaving between incinerators and spinning saw blades. No doubt I was in Dr. Quietus’s world. A place of fire and smoke, with rattling chains and machines that cut and crushed. I had no control. This was his show. He came after me, swinging his fists. I pushed with everything I had, but how long could I keep going? A bird with two broken wings hopping away from a hungry cat.

  You’ve been running for a long time, Westlake Soul.

  And I would keep running until he caught me, pinned me down, and finished the job he’d started more than two years ago.

  It’s almost over. So very close.

  I ran through a welding bay lined with hideous sculptures. I tipped one over behind me. It broke into sharp pieces, littering the floor. This slowed Dr. Quietus but didn’t stop him. He stumbled and roared, then flapped his oily wings and took to the air. I glanced upward and saw him circling above the catwalk. He cried out and swooped, hands like talons.

  You can’t get away from me!

  He grabbed the back of my pyjama shirt and hoisted me off the ground, worked his wings and took me higher. I kicked and struggled but he held fast, then whipped me around and slammed me into the side of an industrial press.

  SPRRAAANNKK!

  I felt every bone crack. My ribcage collapsed and my skull split from the middle out, following the sutures, like tearing along the dotted lines.

  Dr. Quietus howled and I twitched in his claws, drawing what were surely my final breaths. They felt like fishhooks catching on my lungs. He tossed me away and I tumbled through the air long enough to wonder if I would land on one of the spinning saw blades, or in a vat of sulphuric acid. It was the end, no matter what. I’d been beaten at last. It had been long and hard, but the final blow—the actual moment of death—would be quick as a blink.

  Or so I thought.

  I landed on the catwalk. A pile of broken pieces. I groaned and flopped onto my back, looked up and saw Dr. Quietus touch down at the other end of the walkway. He folded his wings and stepped toward me.

  You used to be more of a challenge. He flickered like polished stone. Where’s the fight, Westlake? Where’s the will to live?

  I got to my hands and knees and started to crawl. I recalled how I had once been able to fly away from him, break through walls, jump into the Soulmobile and gun that puppy to a place where the shadows weren’t so long. Not anymore. Even crawling hurt. Most superheroes lose their powers at some time or other. They always get them back, though, and
resume the duty of kicking ass. Wasn’t going to happen to me. This was The End, baby. The Death of Westlake Soul. No chance of being brought back by the Entity, or resurrected in the Kryptonian Regeneration Matrix, like Superman. There wasn’t a roomful of comic book dudes waiting to draw me back into existence. My final breath would be exactly that.

  Pitiful, Dr. Quietus said, stomping toward me, the catwalk creaking under his weight. And you used to be so strong. You used to tame the ocean.

  Yes. The fury beneath the board and the exhilaration of controlling it, tempering the most powerful thing known to man, if only for a moment. This feeling . . . I used it. I got to my feet and staggered three or four steps before being knocked down again. But Dr. Quietus didn’t touch me. Didn’t need to. His boot came down on the steel walkway—BRRROINNGG—and the vibration was enough to send me sprawling.

  I got to my feet again. Staggered on.

  Dr. Quietus laughed. I heard his wings catch air and turned around to see him floating high above. Made me think of the butterfly I had seen. I had thought it trapped, but maybe I was wrong. It occurred to me now that it was too natural—too alive—to be a part of Dr. Quietus’s environment. Which meant that it was a part of mine.